Diabolical Dr. Z follows one man's quest to reanimate the bodies of the dead, but, ridiculed into a heart-attack by his peers, his daughter is forced to pick up the fallen torch and continue the family tradition. She is scarred in an accident and spends the rest of the film seeking revenge throught the use of bizarre scientific experiments and tranced slaves.
The Themes
class="dynamic">Franco
This still-living and working master of the truly terrible film has directed dozens of the least-inspired and poorly conceived works of eurotrash in history. Counted among the most awful are Oasis of the Zombies (1981), The Castle of Fu-Manchu (1972), and The Bloody Judge (1972). Yet, for all his infamy and despite his reputation as a hack, Franco has managed to produce a small handful of inspired works.
It is true that all bad films can be judged by holding it up to the Jess Franco Cannon, but even the European Master of Ineptitude himself has produced a few films of note. Diaboiical Dr. Z just happens to be one of them. Shot in truly beautiful black and white [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and exhibiting some rather surprisingly inspired camera work, this film is truly the bridge between two of the only other Franco films worth much [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], 1962's The Awful Dr. Orloff and 1975's Vampyros Lesbos.
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Jess Franco loves women, and it seems that his fantasy death would be at the hands of a beautiful but deadly femme fatale. Women are usually depicted by Franco as strong, sexually aggressive black widows, whose victims unwittingly run right into their arms, welcoming their fate of death by ecstasy. Female Vampire shows this best, but it is most certainly present in Diabolical Dr. Z as well. This film exhibits none of Franco's trademark shoddy camera work, and even the overuse of zooms and pans he has become infamous for are employed creatively here. The gothic shadowplay and mad scientist zeal of The Awful Dr. Orloff is present [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but we see Franco moving towards the theme of the deadly seductress and ecstatic death he developed more fully in Vampyros Lesbos and Female Vampire as well.
The Film
These three films (and Female Vampire to an extent), represent the absolute best of what Franco was/is capable of. Whatever can be said of his corpus of work outside those, with his slew of mostly dismal films, these remain as a testament that even a hack can be inspired from time to time.